Chapter 906: A Requiem for Knight
Elaine’s energy, which had lingered in Knight’s body, was stirred by the erratic bursts she unleashed, forming a connection, and from her hands holding his head, streams of information poured into her mind.
"...ugh!!"
She groaned as every memory Knight had from the past 24 hours transferred to her: everything he’d learned from the moment the planet had force-fed him information, all he’d heard while imprisoned, up to the moment he was brought to this platform to be executed.
All the missing pieces Elaine needed to fully understand the situation filled in, and her eyes widened in shock at what she learned.
As expected, the story about him being a spy was a cover-up, but Elaine didn’t care about that. It was the Infernal Devil Lords’ decision she cared about.
The planet had stripped the Hero Title of the modifications imposed by the Infernal Devils, restoring its true function to Knight, and in doing so had placed the title beyond their control.
To reclaim it and reinstate those modifications, Knight had to die so they could take back the mantle he had received the previous day.
That was the simple and merciless reason that they had ordered his execution.
From a purely structural standpoint, killing him solved their immediate problem.
But that answer stopped being sufficient the moment she considered what they had not done.
They could have imprisoned him or suppressed his draconic power. Forced service on the frontlines was not only viable but strategically sound, especially given how much stronger his awakening had made him.
Any of those options would have worked, but none of them were chosen.
Knight had not been executed because he was dangerous. If danger were the metric, the planet itself had already deemed him acceptable by granting him power.
He had not been executed because he was uncontrollable, because the moment he collapsed unconscious, he had ceased to be a threat in any meaningful sense.
He had not even been executed because of the lie they fed the public, because lies could be sustained without corpses.
He had been killed simply because his existence was inconvenient.
A Hero who possessed draconic traits, no matter how loyal, no matter how proven, was incompatible with the narrative the Infernal Devil hierarchy depended on. It was not something the noble families, the government, or the hierarchy could allow the common populace to see, not without shattering the image they relied on to rule.
Knight no longer conformed to that image, and so he was removed.
They had killed him because he was different, because he did not match the mould they needed him to fill, because a Hero who was not purely an infernal devil was something this world’s rulers refused to allow to exist.
"That’s...it?"
Elaine’s thoughts fixated only on the ’difference’ being the reason he had been killed.
She couldn’t accept such a reason for his death.
Turning around, she shouted at the former Heroes, her voice filled with pure rage.
"You killed him just because he was different from what you wanted?!"
That part hit her the hardest, because she, too, had almost lost her life for being ’different’. That difference had given her powers she couldn’t control, and those around her had feared her because she was unlike them.
Elaine related to Knight, which made her anger even stronger, especially because of the last thought transmitted to her from his corpse.
The final thought he had before those spears pierced his back.
—I don’t want to die.—
Elaine didn’t like killing.
She was both physically and mentally incapable of taking another life on purpose.
It wasn’t just because she had nearly been killed for her uncontrollable powers, which had taken lives before, but because the first life she had ever taken belonged to someone she had called a ’friend’.
That trauma made Elaine incapable of killing intentionally.
Still, the logical part of her mind knew it could be necessary in some situations.
If Knight had been an enemy, or truly a spy who intended to harm the infernal devils, maybe it would have been different.
But that wasn’t the case.
And that filled Elaine with an unexplainable rage.
Her Drain Field continued to expand, and the storm of death energy swirling around her swept more and more infernal devil soldiers off their feet.
She turned to Knight’s corpse, his last thought echoing in her mind, and slowly shook her head.
’He died just for that? Then what did everything he’d done amount to? He’d fought and bled for them, and this is what he got in the end, just because he was different?’
Elaine vehemently rejected that idea.
But death was final, and there was nothing she could do.
Or was there?
’!’
Elaine remembered the failed experiment Arthur had her conduct months ago, and at that thought, she poured magic power into her spatial ring and summoned the crystal Arthur had given her.
Crushing it in her palm, she released the death law energy infused with the power of Arthur’s Basic Rank Authority contained within it.
That energy flowed through her body, and as she grabbed Knight, she poured it into him, mixing it with the energy of hers lingering inside him.
The law of death that had come to claim Knight’s soul and return it to the reincarnation path instead bent to Elaine’s will, forcing the soul back into his body.
With the amount of death law energy infused into Knight’s corpse and by the borrowed Authority Elaine wielded, Knight was transformed into a creature of undeath.
Elaine immediately shut off her Drain Field since her Life Well was overflowing, and she spun around, dispersing the storm of death energy she had created with one forceful burst, expelling some of the excess life force she had absorbed in the process.
She took deep breaths, struggling to contain the excessive death law energy from the crystal she’d shattered, mentally scolding herself for breaking it entirely in the heat of the moment instead of drawing out a portion of the energy like Arthur had told her to.
As she took the time to calm the storm of power swirling within and around her, the former Heroes, the other stronger Sovereign Realm generals, and the Regional Capital’s Mayor staggered to their feet.
From how much life force Elaine had absorbed, they were all dizzy, and some couldn’t even stay upright and collapsed back down.
Noticing that they had risen, Elaine looked up, heaving deep breaths as she grabbed the ring maintaining her infernal devil disguise and tossed it to the ground.
Her fake horns and tail disappeared, along with her altered skin tone, revealing to everyone that she was not an infernal devil.
"You killed him...because he was different...!"
She summoned her spear, swirling some of the death energy from Arthur’s crystal around it, and swung it at the crowd in front of her.
The wave of energy projected from the spear carved into the ground, shattering the shields the former and current Tanks hastily put up for their companions like glass and sending them both flying.
"Well...I’m different from you, too..."
Elaine chuckled lightly as she spoke, a slightly deranged smile spreading across her face as she raised her spear once more.
"If you could kill him simply because he had draconic factors, then I, of a completely different race, can kill you because you’re different from me...RIGHT??!!"
She forced the death law energy from the broken crystal, which she couldn’t fully control, into her spear, ignoring the cracks forming along the weapon’s shaft.
Anti-divinity radiated from her body and mingled with the death law energy, and without hesitation, she brought her hands down, aiming to swing her spear directly at the former Knight.
But just before she completed the motion, a hand reached out from behind and grabbed her arm, stopping the swing.
With it came a groaning voice.
[Don’t...kill...anger...]
"!"
Knight, now an undead, had risen to his feet, and his first action was not to act on the inexplicable rage burning through him or the world’s hatred toward all infernal devils, but to grab Elaine, preventing her from killing his predecessor in a fit of fury.
The former Knight summoned a sword and attacked at that moment, with other soldiers and former Heroes moving as well, but Elaine simply swirled Arthur’s death law energy around her body, creating a vortex shield that protected her from their attacks.
Her mind focused on Knight and the conversation from a few days ago, on the words he had spoken.
Perhaps because she had given him new life in undeath and shared a connection with him, his meaning was transmitted directly to her.
Elaine’s expression went blank at that moment, and she shook off his hand.
"I...am not angry," she said.
Half the energy swirling around her was sucked into her spear, adding to the energy already around it and bringing the weapon close to its breaking point.
A piece of her soul broke off, dissolving into the anti-divinity flowing from her body into the spear, and the weapon began to transform.
"I...am calm," Elaine muttered between breaths.
The blade at the tip lengthened and sharpened, while the butt of the spear grew into a sharp, bladed point, turning the weapon into a double-edged spear.
The cracks in the shaft disappeared, and it darkened completely, stretching slightly.
"I have never been calmer," Elaine said softly.
From beneath the main spear tip, a jet black, curved blade extended outward, gleaming in the morning sunlight.
At that exact moment, every single active Rule Breaker in the Cosmos trembled, all instinctively sensing the return of a weapon on their tier.
And at the same time, a great many of them muttered the exact same word.
—Requiem—
And the scythe of death descended, singing a requiem for the soul it was about to reap.
